Occupy Education Blogger March Days of Action

Please join us by making your voice heard! The Occupy Education blogger marches in solidarity with the direct action around the world is meant to help amplify our voice and those of other teachers, parents and students. From Portland to Wall St to Munich to Madrid, students, parents and teachers are marching for a better world for our children and our community. Make your stories and visions public today.

Include one vision for a transformed education system or something you believe needs to change to help teachers, students, and parents reclaim their voice in education!

4. Occupy Your Classroom: Here are some ideas:

Hold a GA in your classroom today, discuss protesting, discuss democracy, discuss the Occupy movement, lets students voice on the lesson plan, close the textbook, push the desks out of the way, go outside, no tests, talk or do community service as a class…..

Please join us any way you can, and be public about it. Share with us your voices! Share with us your stories! Share with us your visions of a transformed education system!

Is school an environment for democracy… for learning… for childhood? Well, what does school mean anyways….?

The word school has it’s origins in the outlook and lifestyle of greek philosophers. “Skhole” began as a label for leisure. For them, this meant discussion… philosophizing… thinking… dreaming. Basically a very old version of the modern “hanging out”, sans the drugs, alcohol, sex & television. This concept slowly came to mean a PLACE of “leisure”, where people grew and learned and discovered.

This idea grew in all directions. Relevant to U.S. citizens is the take on “school” developed by the Prussian education system. This is what Wikipedia has to say about the history and purpose of said system:

“During the 18th century, the Kingdom of Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce tax-funded and generally compulsory primary education, comprising an eight-year course of primary education, called Volksschule. It provided not only the skills needed in an early industrialized world (reading, writing and arithmetic), but also a strict education in ethics, duty, discipline and obedience………Seeking to replace the controlling functions of the local aristocracy, the Prussian court attempted to instill social obedience in the citizens through indoctrination. Every individual had to become convinced, in the core of his being, that the King was just, his decisions always right, and the need for obedience paramount.
The schools imposed an official language, to the prejudice of ethnic groups living in Prussia. The purpose of the system was to instill loyalty to the Crown and to train young men for the military and the bureaucracy. As the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a key influence on the system, said, “If you want to influence [the student] at all, you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will.”

This is the environment in which compulsory(forced by law) education was born. Less than one hundred years into our existence as an independent nation, America entered into an Industrial Revolution. This brought about the need for a generation of Americans capable of being effective factory workers. We needed a generation of americans who were competent in English communication & basic math(the 3 R’s). We needed a lot of them, and fast. This could not occur with a population who marched to their own respective drums. And so in the name of progress and financial security, our government adopted this compulsory Prussian system.

Now regardless of your stance on the Industrial Revolution and whether it did more good or harm; it is over. Today we live in the Information Age where innovation, self-discipline, entrepreneurialism & individuality are more important than obedience & the memorization of facts. We can find out whatever we need to through the ample, diverse and open resources of our current times, and it becomes important only to know HOW to find that information… how to judge it for quality… how to effectively apply that information to our lives. This is an approach to learning which is in line with our country’s democratic values, leaving compulsory education up for question and giving us the freedom to go back to the roots of the issue to ask big questions. Such as “What is a school?”, “What is education for?”, “What is necessary for success?”, “What is success?”, “What SHOULD schools look like?” & the big one “Are schools necessary or effective at all?”.

After years of researching these questions, it is my personal belief that their is no one thing that anybody should learn & their is no one “right” way to live well or to be happy. With that said, success(in almost any form) cannot occur in the life of a person who is apathetic, out of touch with him/herself & unsure of their worth. So the question becomes (REGARDLESS of if we are to have government-funded, staffed buildings as the primary centers for human development) how can we educate in a way that serves to improve confidence, engagement & personal reflection?

My name is Kaya Kirks. I Occupy Education by working to eradicate un-democratic & confidence-crushing approaches to childhood. We are all capable of greatness, as long as we are not made to question that capability.